


Goodnight (Sleep Tight)

by yamcasserole



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: F/M, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 02:59:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5480765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yamcasserole/pseuds/yamcasserole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eiffel and Hera didn't know exactly what to expect from their first deep-space mission. They certainly didn't expect to find each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodnight (Sleep Tight)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Azraeldigabriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azraeldigabriel/gifts).



    Sometime before Hera was activated, some folks in lab coats, or maybe just sharp office attire, decided it would be a good idea to give her emotions. They wrote lines upon lines of code, giving her good feelings and bad ones and ones that fell somewhere in between. They gave her the words to describe them. They gave her happiness and sadness, pride and guilt, hope and dread, and hundreds upon hundreds of others in countless languages. They didn't give her a say in the matter. She would have liked a choice, Hera reflected sadly as she watched Lovelace's ship careening into space with Doug inside of it. She wondered what she would have chosen.

    ---

    Eiffel was more nervous than he would have cared to admit those first few weeks on the Hephaestus. His commanding officer was arguably the most intimidating person he'd ever met, the doctor was the textbook example of the evil-genius type, and the omniscient eye-in-the-sky AI... well, that was just plain weird. By the second day, his initial adrenaline had ebbed away and the situation finally began to feel real. He barely made it through lunch, picking at his "food," avoiding his crewmates' concerned looks, and dumping the rest of his protein packs and seaweed down the disposal before racing up to the comms room and locking the door behind him. 

     He sank into his chair, globs of salty tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. A 730-day rotation. Why had he thought this was a good idea? Two years of his life he would be spending on this tin can with the same people, same routine, same, same, same, day in and day out, and it was far too late to back out now. There was no way he could do this for two more years. Hell, he wasn't doing too hot after two  _days_. Less than one percent done with the mission and he was barricaded in his workspace, crying. Eiffel poked languidly at one of the tear-planets he'd made and sent it cascading into a million shiny droplets. He sat back and let out a sigh- which turned into a startled gasp as a voice piped hesitantly through the speakers. 

     "O-officer Eiffel? Are you okay?" 

     "Agh! Hera, you scared me! Could you, like,  _not_ do that?"

     "I'm sorry! I didn't mean t-to alarm you! I just thou-ought, well, you looked unha-a-a-a-" Hera's voice dissolved into glitching as she grew more and more flustered. 

     "It's not a big deal, but like- give me some warning. Don't just barge in like that, it's..." _well, there really is nowhere to get some privacy on this thing. Can't even cry in peace._

_\---_

Hera felt hurt. And embarrassed. And confused. And, well, a lot of things. (There came a point when having all these words became more of an inconvenience than a benefit). She'd meant to help, but it seemed that Officer Eiffel had found her decidedly unhelpful. Only two days into the mission and she'd already messed up. Now things would probably be awkward, and all the rest of the crew would hear about it, and, and... Hera sighed internally. Best to just stick to protocol from now on, she supposed. Do your job and don't try to get friendly with the crew. They'll be gone before you know it anyway. 

     ---

     Doug Eiffel made it awfully difficult to stick to protocol. Especially when he decided to strike up a conversation a few hours later.

     "Hera? Can you hear me?" Eiffel asked, floating aimlessly around his quarters. She didn't answer immediately. Eiffel looked hopefully up at the nearest tangle of wires running along the wall, as though it were Hera.

     "I can hear you, Officer Eiffel," she eventually replied, bracing herself for another awkward conversation. 

     "So... how's it going?" he asked hesitantly, hopefully, still staring at the wires.

     "Nominally. Systems are running smoothly, and our orbit is stable."

     "No, I mean... not the Hephaestus. You. Hera." 

     "Oh." That caught her off-guard. "I'm fine, I guess."

     "Cool. That's... good." Their conversation reached a lull, neither willing to speak first. Finally, Eiffel broke the silence. "So, I was thinking, and I want to apologize. I'm sorry about earlier, if I seemed rude or hurt your feelings or anything. This is just so... weird. This whole situation. This space-travel, eight light-years away from home thing. I don't know what to think. 

     "Officer Eiffel, I- it's fine. You don't need to apologize. I understand. I made things awkward. I just thought... I don't know. Something. I won't do that again, I'll just- not talk to you, if that's what you want."

     "No, no! Hera, it's okay. I'd like to talk to you. If- if you want to talk, that is. We can both vent about space and how boring it is here and, in my case, how scared shitless I am."

     "You're not the only one, Officer Eiffel. I feel the same. One mistake and I could end up killing all of you, and I _have_ made some mistakes, and... yeah. I think it would do both of us good to talk."

     Eiffel breathed a sigh of relief. "I was hoping you'd say that."

     "Officer Eiffel?"

     "Yeah?" 

     "You do realize that those are just electrical wires you're talking to, right? My nearest optical unit is over there, by the door," Hera said, with a hint of a smile in her voice.

     "Oh. Uh, yeah I totally knew that," Eiffel said, grinning over in the direction of the door. "Because the station schematics are something I totally looked over before we got here."

     "I bet you totally did."

     ---

     The Hephaestus was still lonely and boring, but a little less so. It was nice to have someone to talk to, Eiffel thought, someone who wouldn't judge him if he cried a little (or a lot). Someone who would, however reluctantly, help him wreak a little havoc on the station.

     "Officer Eiffel, this isn't going to work. I've run the algorithms over and over and it's just not feasible."

     "Aw, come on! How hard can it be to just synthesize some fog and pipe it into the talent show room for... dramatic effect?"

     "Doug. Science says you can't. The mist will get into the electrical wiring and we'll all die of... well, I'll short-circuit and Minkowski will have your head on a pike. This is, arguably, the worst idea you've ever had. 

     "Okay, well how about... What if... Okay, I'm drawing a blank. I've got no other ideas."

     "Wait. What about Hilbert? I bet he could make a less-dangerous synthetic mist. You can have your prank and eat it too! Wait. No, that's not how that goes, is it? Ugh, proverbs."

     "Cake," Eiffel supplied helpfully as he headed down to the lab.

     A couple of hours later, they were ready to put their plan into action. Hilbert was more than happy to help them disrupt the talent show, and had whipped up some fake fog in next to no time. Halfway through his painful rendition of 'I Dreamed a Dream,' Eiffel gave the cue.

     "...Uh... The pavement shines like, er, silver / All the... um... lights are misty in the river," Minkowski, dressed in a bright blue coat and hat as Javert, winced as Eiffel's voice cracked. Why he had been so insistent on playing Fantine was beyond her. "Ahem.  _Misty by the river_ ," Eiffel repeated, significantly louder.

     "Oh! Right!" Hera exclaimed brightly, releasing the fog, which quickly spread through the room.

     "Eiffel! What the hell?" Minkowski yelled.

     "Surprise! Special effects courtesy of Doug Eiffel Studios! Well, mostly Hera and Hilbert."

     "Wait. Eiffel. That's a great idea!" Minkowski exclaimed, looking around at the fog excitedly. "This fog- if we could dilute it a bit, maybe just use less- it would provide perfect ambiance for a production of Macbeth!"

     "Wh- what?" Eiffel's smirk was quickly replaced by a concerned expression.

     "Hilbert, can you make more fog? Start learning your lines, guys. A week from now, we're going to have a special  _additional_ talent show! This is going to be the best performance of the Scottish Play that space has ever seen!"

     Later, in the comms room, Hera wouldn't stop laughing.

     "Th- that backfired so badly!" she giggled as Eiffel sulkily spun around in his chair. "I can't believe we're having  _another_ talent show!" 

     "It's hilarious," Eiffel sighed, flipping through his copy of the script for  _Macbeth._ "Why do I have to play the dead guy?"

     ---

     Sometimes, the monotony of the ship's routine was almost pleasant. Everything to a schedule, the comfort of repetition. And then sometimes the monotony was more like torture than anything, and everyone was practically at each other's throats. Either way, Eiffel and Hera found time to talk, and laugh, and sometimes just sit in silence. And then Lovelace came along, limping into the station with a battered escape pod and a bomb, and turned their lives upside-down.

     "Do you think she's really going to do it? Blow up the station?" Eiffel asked one night, after a long day of repairs and subterfuge.

     "Doug, she's scared. And angry," Hera replied, scanning her databanks for more descriptive words. There was a nice Portuguese one, but she didn't bother. Doug didn't speak Portuguese anyway. "She hates this place. I think she thinks it'll bring her closure to destroy it."

     "But she knows it'll kill you."

     "She doesn't see me like you do. She thinks I'm just strings of ones and zeros, which I guess is what I am. I'm just a program. I'm expendable."

     "Hey. You're not. You're-"

     "Doug, I was never meant to come back to Earth anyway. I'm just some lines of code they can overwrite for the next mission they send up here. Lovelace is just doing what Goddard would have done anyway, albeit more... dramatically. I'd love to find a way out of this, change her mind, just as much as you would, but it's just not realistic. Either way, I die."

     "Hera. You know what you said way back when, how we shouldn't chalk everything you do up to your programming? Remember? Don't reduce yourself to a few of those ones and zeros. You're lines and lines of code, and you're also Hera, you're you. And, well, that's... pretty neat. You're the smartest person I know, and I know we'll think of some way to get out of this."

     "Thanks, Doug. I appreciate it." They sat in comfortable silence, watching Wolf 359 as it glowed and burned outside the window.

     "Doug?"

     "Yeah, Hera?"

     "You're definitely my favorite fragile, carbon-based, uncomfortably liquid life-form. You know that, right?"

     Doug laughed softly. "Love you too, darlin'."

     ---

     Love. That was one word they didn't give Hera a definition for. They gave her the word and linked it to similar emotions, so it was just listed as an amalgam of other feelings. Hera decided to make her own definition. Love was staying up late talking about life. Pranking the crew together. Talking each other through bouts of experimental meatbagginess. Ending every evening reminding each other to sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite, even though Hera pointed out every time that the Hephaestus was a closed environment without even the slightest chance of bedbugs. Waiting.

     ---

     Eiffel waited for Hera when she went offline. He spent countless sleepless nights trying to bring her back. When he drifted off into space in a rickety escape pod, Hera returned the favor. She didn't need sleep anyway. She sent out countless transmissions. Minkowski recalibrated the satellite dish again and again. They waited, sometimes together, sometimes alone.

     Hera saw the incoming sound wave in the early hours of the morning. She didn't dare to get her hopes up. It was probably just some more music from the Dorado constellation, she told herself, sighing and opening a comms channel.

     "Hello? Hephaestus, do you copy?" a weak voice came through the comms room speakers. Hera froze in shock.

     "Doug? Is that you?"

     "Hera!"

     "Doug, how- what- how? Where are you?" Hera frantically scrambled to lock onto the transmission.

     "I was fiddling around with the radio- not much else to do. I ended up orbiting around some planet. It's good to hear your voice again."

     "Yeah. Doug, are you okay?" Something was off. His breathing sounded quick and shallow. "What's going on?"

     Eiffel laughed weakly. "Well, funny story: I might have accidentally knocked out the engines. And the life support system is probably going to go out sooner rather than later. But hey, I got the radio to work extra-well, so, score!"

     Hera didn't know whether to sob or laugh. She did both. "Looks like you're a halfway competent communications officer after all, then. Doug, you're going to-"

     "Yeah. Well. Just- it's okay."

     "Doug-"

     "No, it's not. It's not okay. I'm scared, Hera."

     "I don't know what to say. I wish I could just... be there. So you're not alone."

     "I'm not alone, Hera. You're here."

     "I wish-"  _that you were here. Safe. Not in imminent danger of dying._

"Yeah. Me too. Hera?" Eiffel wheezed.

     "Hm?" 

     "Can you... Can you tell me a story?"

     "A- a story?" 

     "Yeah. Just- anything."

     "Of course, Doug."

     "You're the best, sweetheart."

     "Okay. So..." Hera let out a shaky sigh. "Everything is going to be alright. Doctor Hilbert will use his science know-how and find a way to move the Hephaestus. We'll leave Wolf 359 and come get you. You'll come inside the Hephaestus and you'll be safe and warm and happy. Minkowski will rush to the airlock and hug you, and you'll make some pop culture reference, and she'll laugh, and Lovelace will smile, and even Hilbert will secretly think it's funny. We'll be able to talk for hours, just like old times. Then we'll pilot the Hephaestus away, all the way to Earth, and you can have your pizza and cigarettes again, and you'll show me those Star Wars movies you keep telling me about. I can't wait to see them, Doug."

     Hera paused, hoping he would say something, her heart sinking when she heard only silence. "Doug, can you hear me? Doug?" She turned the comms channel up to its highest volume, straining to hear a response, the shallowest breath, wincing when she was met with a deafening wave of static. She waited for a few minutes, then sighed sadly and terminated the comms channel. "Bye, Doug. Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite."

 


End file.
